It Was Never Free:

How the Lack of Funding Kills Creativity

They say there’s no limit to imagination or creativity, but as a creative, I’m here to tell you there is. You come up with an idea, refine it, and push it as far as you can. But sooner or later, you hit the wall. That wall is money.

Funding kills ideas — or more accurately, the lack of it does.

Whether you’re making a comic book, a film, writing a novel, or designing concept art, there’s only so far you can go without resources. Sure, your comic can be digital, but you still need artists and writers. Maybe you’re both, but once it’s online, how do you get people to see it?

The same goes for a book. You’ve written something great, but now you need a cover, editing, publication, and marketing. You can design the cover yourself, call in favors, or even upload it to KDP and self-publish. But what then? Without money to market it, it just sits there, buried under a million others, waiting to be “discovered.”

Concept art? Same story. You can have pens, markers, or the latest software, but once you want to make something tangible to see it in the real world, you need materials. Resin costs money. 3D printers cost money. Time costs money.

And filmmaking? Forget it. Before we even started raising funds for The Manual, we had to form an LLC, build a pitch deck, hire an editor, and pay for a professional script breakdown and budget. That was nearly $15,000 before a single investor conversation.

Most artists I know don’t have those resources. To get anything off the ground, you need support.

People like to say “just crowdfund it,” but crowdfunding isn’t the miracle it used to be. You can’t just post a link and watch the pledges roll in. Social media algorithms bury posts with external links, so you have to pay for reach. And even then, you’re fighting the noise of corporate campaigns that dominate the space. Without a marketing budget, your campaign drowns.

Grassroots reach is limited. Social media throttles visibility. The economy throttles generosity. And the scammers and mismanaged campaigns out there have poisoned the well for the rest of us.

So yeah — imagination is infinite. But execution isn’t.

That’s the part no one likes to talk about. Creativity doesn’t die from lack of ideas; it dies from lack of fuel.

The truth of it is, creativity was never free. We’ve been sold that myth, so we’ll keep grinding, keep producing, and keep feeding a system that profits off our unpaid passion. Platforms, publishers, distributors, they’ve all found ways to make our dreams cost more than we can afford. The starving artist isn’t romantic; it’s exploitation. Exposure isn’t currency, and suffering isn’t noble.

But maybe that’s exactly why creation matters. Every book, every film, every idea that makes it into the world is a middle finger to the machine. If we can’t outspend them, we outlast them. We outthink them. We pour our stories into every crack we can find until the system can’t ignore us. The lack of money won’t kill creativity. The lack of access and respect might be, and that’s something worth being furious about.

Because if we stop, the only stories left will be the ones corporations can afford to tell. And we all know what that looks like…reboots, sequels, prequels, and the same tired shit over and over again.